2009-02-16

Life goes on and making the internet more secure with Web of Trust (WOT)

It's now more than a week since I left Sun and I have been very busy with old commitments; I had one talk at the Tampere University about "Open source licensing and how this affects quality" and a keynote about "Open Source Licensing" for the "2nd Symposium of the HyperTransport Center of Excellence" in Mannheim, Germany.

My web site, askmonty.org, is coming around nicely but it will take a couple of more weeks to add some missing information to it. After that I will start working on the Maria, MariaDB and MySQL code bases for real.

The most exiting thing that has happened so far, is that my investment company "Open Ocean" have just closed a funding round with "Web of Trust" i.e. WOT. I will take a seat on the company's Board of Directors.

What I like about WOT is that it solves a practical problem I have often experienced myself when I browse and want to buy things from Web sites: "Can I really trust this web site with my personal information, like my credit card". In addition WOT solves the problem in an elegant and user friendly way; Easy enough so that anyone can use it.

So what is then WOT? WOT is a popular and free browser add-on that works with Firefox and Explorer. It offers you information whether a web site is known to be involved in Internet scams, identity theft, spyware, spam or if it's just an unreliable online shop.

WOT provides safety ratings to search results when using Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Digg and other popular sites. The Website rating information is continuously updated by the WOT user community and numerous trusted sources, such as listings of from numerous malware and phishing sites.

I encourage everyone to try out WOT to get a better Internet experience. You should consider registering as a WOT user to be able to rate web sites.

In addition, if you encounter a web site that is un-trustworthy, please rate it trough WOT to tell other Internet users about your experience to save them from the possibly trouble you suffered. Also, if you really like a web site or if you get excellent service from it, please use WOT and tell others about this!

I hope we can all work together and make the Internet a place where you can easily know where it's safe to browse and shop!

You can find a lot more information about WOT, including downloading it, from http://www.mywot.com. If you are using Firefox, you can install it by using the menu option "tools/add-ons", click on "get add-ons" and do a search after "WOT".

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being a Web Of Trust user myself, I can agree with you wholeheartedly in WOT's ease of use and effectiveness. What sets Web Of Trust apart from other web site advisers is it's userbase - WOT is "people helping people."

I am sure the WOT Team is excited with your participation. I am curious to see where WOT is headed now that you are on board.

peace,
- G7W

cotojo said...

Hello Monty,
Congratulations on your appointment to WOT'S Board of Directors.
I am sure that your input will be much valued and a great asset to the growing community of WOT users.
I wish you every success.
Colin
Free PC Security

Unknown said...

Welcome to WOT,

It has worked out well for me and I have been able to help others by rating a few sites myself. WOT's strength is in the number of ordinary users.

Yours,

PHung